Louisville beats Michigan to win NCAA title

Louisville head coach Rick Pitino celebrates after the team defeated Michigan 82-76 during the NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball championship game, Monday, April 8, 2013, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
— AP

Louisville head coach Rick Pitino celebrates after the team defeated Michigan 82-76 during the NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball championship game, Monday, April 8, 2013, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
/ AP

Rick Pitino had agreed to coach Michigan’s basketball team in 2001, after he resigned from the Boston Celtics. But his wife suggested he try for the opening at Louisville instead and return to the state of the Kentucky, where their family had been happy for eight years while Pitino coached the Wildcats in the 1990s.

Pitino explained that the rivalry cuts so deep that the former Kentucky coach just doesn’t go coach at Louisville, that once you wear blue you don’t pull on a red sweater, that the abuse he’d face would be unmerciful.

Recounted Pitino: “She said, ‘You know that line you’re always using: I’d rather live one day as a lion than a thousand as a lamb. You’re an f ing lamb,’ then walked downstairs.”

Pitino called Michigan back, apologized, pulled on a red sweater and ducked. And Monday night, 12 years later, he led the Cardinals to the NCAA title before a record 74,326 at the Georgia Dome, by beating Michigan.

The 82-76 victory likely will be remembered as a classic, a game that helped college basketball forget statistically its least prolific season in a half-century with an electric, effervescent encounter – a pair of heavyweights majestically dancing around the ring without the clutching, grabbing, lunging so pervasive over the previous five months.

For Pitino, it might not be the best thing that happened to him in the past week. There are rolls, and then there’s the run of preposterous good fortune that has suddenly graced a 60-year-old basketball coach from Bayville, N.Y.

Last week he received a call informing him he would be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. While listening to the news validating a 39-year coaching career, his cell phone kept beeping. It was his son, Richard, texting that he got hired as head coach at Minnesota.

On Saturday, a horse he co-owns won the Santa Anita Derby and is headed for the Kentucky Derby. A few hours later, his Cardinals overcame a 12-point deficit against Wichita State in the Final Four.

Monday night, his Cardinals overcame a 12-point deficit – again – to make him the first coach to win national titles with different programs.

Next stop: the tattoo parlor.

A few weeks back, the Louisville players made Pitino promise he’d get a tattoo if they won the national title. Pitino: “Hell yeah, I’m getting a tattoo.”

Said Luke Hancock: "I don't think he knew what he was getting into when he signed up for that one."

It was the second largest comeback win in 75 years of NCAA men’s basketball finals, topped only by Loyola (Chicago) erasing a 15-point deficit against Cincinnati 50 years ago. It was just the 16th time a team trailing at the half has won.

For the Cardinals, it was no big deal. Do it all the time. It was the seventh time they have trailed by double figures this season and won. It was the 14th time in the last three seasons.